


Postpartum

by Ydnam



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:45:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ydnam/pseuds/Ydnam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Emma didn't really want to give up Henry. Maybe she just felt like she had to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postpartum

Emma didn’t cry when they took the baby away. She hadn’t cried once since arriving in Phoenix. She knew crying wouldn’t help. Crying had never helped. Crying just showed everyone that you were weak. She learned that when she was very young and she never forgot it. No matter how hurt you were you couldn’t let anyone see it. People would take advantage of the pain. They would use the pain against you. They would hurt you even more once they knew how to do it.

They let her hold the baby. Maybe that had been a mistake. It was too short a time and too long all at once. She shouldn’t have held him at all. She shouldn’t even have looked at him. This hurt. All of it hurt. She kissed him once, on his forehead. One kiss felt right. A goodbye and a benediction. She wanted him to know she did this because she cared about him even though that was a ridiculous hope. 

And then the social worker was there gently trying to remove her baby from her arms. Except he wasn’t hers. He would never be hers. She was never going to see him again after this. She was never even going to know his name. He was never going to know that his mother had gone to prison because his father sold her out and abandoned her. He was never going to know he was born in the hospital wing of a prison. All her son, who wasn’t hers at all, ever had to know was that he was given up to have a better life. Given up because a family who wanted him would be better than a girl who never had one of her own and wouldn’t know what to do with one anyway. 

He was better off without her. She understood that. She’d thought, for a little while, that maybe she could make it work. That they would be a family, just the two of them. But babies deserved better than prison walls and felon mothers. Babies deserved better than her. She knew that now.

She didn’t cry until the room had emptied out of everyone. Not until she was alone with her pain and her thoughts. She cried for herself. For being alone again. For being a baby so unwanted she was left by the side of a highway. For being a child who could not understand why mom and dad were sending her away when there was a baby coming. For being alone until she met Neal. For being alone after Neal had betrayed her. For trusting Neal before that. For giving away the baby. For regretting giving him up. For knowing it was the right thing to do. For being in prison in Phoenix when all she had wanted was to be free in Tallahassee with a man she thought she loved. 

She was finished before the nurse arrived to check on her. The woman must have heard her and Emma could feel how puffy and red her eyes were. But she said nothing when she came in. Emma would have blamed it all on hormones if she had. She just tucked Emma’s blanket a little more snugly around her and laid a hand on her shoulder for a moment. That tiny act of compassion, somehow, hurt almost as much as the rest of it.


End file.
